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Spillover – no charm, no rhyme. Taking inspiration is a neat crime

It all began with a modern-enough offering – the bulk-sms package on my cell-phone which ends soon, on Saturday. I didn’t want to leave close to a hundred sms-es unused. So I sent a characteristic ‘Hi’ to four friends, all of who have been in my life for longer than eight years. And for the record, I am 26-and-close-to-another-month old myself.

Two responded instantly. They were two highly normal people, boys and gentlemen in the simplest sense. They were nice and then bade me goodnight; inspite of my acting rather whimsically with them after 11 PM. These are guys I can count on, for reasonable to not-so-reasonable things. A girlfriend responded too after a while. These are people who remind me of parts of myself.

While all this was happening, I was rummaging my phonebook for more victims. Obviously my sms package does not cover international sms, so I had to leave my best friend be. The one guy who responded not at all, well, not much lost.

What came home to me was how few people I had the liberty to browbeat at that hour. Of course there was a time when I had a dozen people at my finger-tips. I do not mind not being so much in the loop now. But it’s these other people – these people who only smile at me when I act sane (read ‘who are interested only in my best behaviour’) that abound in my list of regular contacts.

No regrets. I’ve obviously played my cards that way. And I love all these people who’re in my life. I am not the one to come up with freakish scenarios where I’d have to call someone at 4 AM and start blubbing about how few would care to blink the sleep out of their eyes. Hell, I am happy I have friends who sleep at a reasonable hour and who have got their own lives to lead. That gives me my space.

And those who don’t sleep at these so-called polite hours, woohoo! There are some who say I’ve aged before my time. Others suggest that I’ve bound myself too securely to apron-strings. I’m sure it’s a bit of both. I would love to let go and have a dash at the psychedelic. I probably will, too. Not just now.

I swear. I labour unholy thoughts. I shoot my mouth off, curse, trample and burst into stormy emotions. I worry over teeniest bits of stupidity, forget horrendously grave mistakes. I am that, this with some more to come. Ridiculous. That sounds like I am talking myself downhill at a beauty pageant.

That’s fine. I veer from one towering high to an abysmal low. It often happens on Monday nights, when the freedom of the weekend past and the delights of the workday experienced are too closely juxtaposed. Monday does put me off – not in the way one would expect, but in the way it brings back order to my time. I am no free spirit. I tether myself to details as if for dear life.

I pray, summon and form immediate opinions. I am lost when my computer is off and my phone is not ringing and nothing on TV is interesting. Oh for cryin’ out loud. Yes, I am crying out, for anything – from the waft of breeze to calm me to the silliest task to occupy me – if it promises me respite from the avalanche of thought.

I do stuff that I like almost everyday. Have a few TV shows I enjoy, job that I heart and nice (though not enough) books around me. I don’t exercise enough, and it is beginning to show. I am in the throes of delight reasonably often. Negativity visits too, earning many frequent flyer miles.

Mutually exclusive experiences are rife. Can’t contemplate a smile or a laugh one moment, then can’t stop grinning. Cannot resist oneiric charms, like a tumbleweed blown in the wind. [Yep, patent ratified] And then get stoic enough to provoke a block of stone.

Man, ain’t it a collusion of emotions. Logic does breeze in, and out. Emotions endure. So help me God.

In Brush Script MT at 12 28 AM, 1st November, 2011.

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